Methuselah Star Star Facts (Type, Distance, Magnitude, Age, Colour, Location and more) (2024)

FAQs

What are some facts about the Methuselah star? ›

The curious star is located some 190 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Libra and it rapidly journeys across the sky at 800,000 mph (1.3 million kilometers per hour). Fast facts: – Methuselah covers the width of the moon in the night sky every 1,500 years.

190.1 light years

HD 140283 / Distance to Earth

Thus the blue star, on that theory, would be the youngest, and the red star the oldest.

The first is that the mass of the Methuselah star is 0.780 ± 0.010 solar masses, with an age of 13.7 ± 0.7 billion years. The second estimate was a mass and age of 0.805 ± 0.010 solar masses and an age of 12.2 ± 0.6 billion years, respectively.

In eastern California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) known as Methuselah has long been considered Earth's oldest living thing. According to tree-ring data, Methuselah is 4,853 years old — meaning it was well established by the time ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza.

UY Scuti holds the prestigious title of the largest known star, a red supergiant star that dwarfs even the most luminous stars in our night sky. As a hypergiant star, UY Scuti's immense size is almost incomprehensible, with a radius about 1,700 times larger than that of our Sun.

The oldest star in the known universe is the Methuselah star, also known as HD 140283, a subgiant star. Methuselah is located in the constellation Libra, close to the Milky Way galaxy's Ophiuchus border, and around 190 light-years away from the Earth. It has a 7.205 apparent magnitude.

Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus about 50 million years. Scientists have scoured the Earth searching for the oldest rocks to radiometrically date.

He used samples of the Canyon Diablo meteorite that landed about 50,000 years ago in what is now the US state of Arizona, and using lead-lead dating came up with an estimated age range of 4.53 billion to 4.58 billion… years. Since then, other meteorites have also been used to find the age of Earth.

We can't see them, but we know that black holes can exist thanks to the groundwork laid by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. A black hole forms when the mass of an object, like a star, suddenly collapses down to a tiny volume. A small object with a large mass causes a gaping dent in space-time.

What is the 14 billion year old star? ›

The Methuselah Star, HD 140283, was first noticed for rapidly approaching Earth, but now its fame comes from its extreme age. The star HD 140283 has been called the "Methuselah star" for its extreme age. At an estimated over 14 billion years old, it's the oldest star we know, at least within our galaxy.

As stars age, they go out of hydrogen to burn, reducing the energy they emit. Thus, younger stars can look bluer while older ones look redder, and in this way, a star's color can inform us something about that star's age. Class O stars, blue, are the hottest, and class M stars, red color, are the coldest.

Methuselah, in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), patriarch whose life span as recorded in Genesis (5:27) was 969 years. Methuselah has survived in legend and tradition as the longest-lived human.

The Book of Moses, a 19th century Mormon text, says that after Enoch and the City of Zion were taken up to heaven, Methuselah stayed behind; this was so that God's promises to Enoch – that he would always have descendants on earth and that he would be an ancestor of Noah – would be fulfilled.

Methuselah is located in the Inyo National Forest and sits in a remote area between California's Sierra Nevada range and the Nevada border.

And yet, we know how stars work, and astronomers have estimated the age of the Methuselah star, found right here in the Milky Way, to be 14.5 billion years old: significantly older than the cosmos itself. Clearly, you can't have a star within the Universe that's older than the Universe itself.

Methuselah is believed to be the oldest star in the entire known universe, having formed over 14 billion years ago. Its age makes it older than the universe itself. Another mystery added to the list of those involving our universe.

"One of the oldest stars ever discovered is the Methuselah Star," French said. The star, which is 190 light-years from Earth, is named after the character in the Bible who supposedly lived for almost a millennium. "The current estimate of this star's age is 13.7 billion years," French said.